It has been known for months that this wasn’t a coupe. At least I knew it, if you didn’t you haven’t been paying attention to the car industry news/spy shots. Working as an automotive writer, that is a surprise.

It is also a 3 door + hatch design. It has a single drivers door and two passenger side doors.

I think the one rear door is a lame waste of resources. It increase cost/weight for negligible benefit. You have to re-engineer the body for LHD/RHD.

Cars in Korea are LHD – only in a few countries this will be an issue. Not sure why globally there hasn’t been a discussion as to why some countries still have RHD (England / Japan) and not port over to LHD traffic like the majority of other countries.

Even if it is one country, the engineering has to be done for both ways.
But who really buys an ultra small (CRX size) car and wants rear doors for the munchkin seats. This is NOT a family car. Sticking on a rear door won’t change that.

Bytor: you’re right… this was hinted at back in June. I’m not sure how it slipped by me, other than the fact that there is a lot of auto news and I am but one person.
Also, the “coupe=two door” formula has been outdated for some time… hell, Mercedes is looking at a five-door coupe.
Still, Hyundai was hiding that third door as recently as a month and a half ago… which somehow makes me feel better about missing the rumor memo.

While they did camo it, any of the shots that showed both sides revealed a much longer drivers door, than passenger door, the reason for this was immediately obvious for most that noticed this and there were discussions about it.

I really don’t like the asymmetry of different doors on the passenger/driver side. I drive a coupe currently (traditional definition, 2 door with trunk) and the few times people end up in the +2 seats they have to tilt a seat to get in. I don’t see this as a big deal. If I was putting someone in the back seat I would get a 4 door with a bigger back seat.
This car is even smaller than mine and those back seat will likely remain folded most of the time making the small rear door a complete waste.

@Michael Karesh:
For what it’s worth, rear hinged doors are a real pain in parking lots if you’ve got to let rear seat passengers in/out (if they’re the sort of rear hinged door that requires that the front be opened first). I grew to hate them on my 2006 Frontier and those doors were relatively short.

The latest report is that for right hand drive markets, the Veloster will be getting rear doors on both sides and that a 210 HP turbo variant will eventual hit the European market (doors like on the RX-8 have gotten numerous complaints).

You’d be surprised that small families (single child) will buy small coupes. You get the fun to drive quotient that we all want from the cars, a decent sized backseat for a smaller child so you can use it daily, and hatchback packing versatility so you can pack it to the gills for vacation.

@colin42:
Depending on how generous the parking spot in question is, you can have people from both front *and* back trying to get out and the space available to do it between the two doors can make this cumbersome. The RX-8 has a pretty small door so maybe it wasn’t as much an issue there, but it was on my Frontier when carrying passengers in the back or sometimes even when loading cargo in there. Of course just having no rear door would have been even more challenging, but if you have the space (as the Veloster appears to in the pic) then what benefit will a rear hinged door give you that a standard front hinged rear door won’t (aside from aesthetic appeal)?

I agree with jaje. There is no sense in America and mainland Europe driving on the wrong side of the road just because Napoleon wanted to be bloody-minded. All countries should drive on the left , with the steering wheel on the right.

What’s with the extra large opening for the rear door? Is this designed for loading directly from cargo ships or something? If the electic door closer malfunctions a crane will need to be called to close the hatch.

Does it have a glass roof? Because the lift gate / hatchback appears to have TWO glass sections. Also the 3-door thing – I like this idea, my mother has a 3-door Saturn hatchback and she loves how easy it is to load stuff into the back seat. For quick trips or for those with small kids (or a dog?) being able to access the back seats quickly is a god send.

Where is the better CRX than the CRZ the Veloster was touted as ? Looks more like competition for the Fiesta/Fit/Juke . The Fiesta was also rated at 40mpg and fell well short of that in tests . Hope the rumors of the CRZ putting in a gasoline only engine are true . Then watch it outsell the Hyundai and the …. whatever else would compare to it .

How so? Because it has rear seats? In Japan, the CRZ has rear seats.
It will almost certainly have 140 HP, be faster, lower price, better handling the a CRZ, comparable or better highway MPG. What does it take to better the CRZ for you? 200lbs and $3000 of Hybrid complexity for an extra 2MPG in the city?
Did you see this spy link posted above:
http://www.woodyscarsite.com/2011/01/2011-hyundai-veoster.html
It looks very much like a small hot hatch. IMO it looks like a cross between CRX and Scirocco.
I could do without the back door, but otherwise it seems to hit all the marks.

One door on the left and two on the right makes it an oddity that will have people scratching their heads . And if the rumors about the CRZ going with two gasoline engines – a 160 horsepower and the 200 from the Si turn out to be true the Veloster won’t stand a chance competing in sales . But if Honda stupidly keeps it a hybrid only I agree with your assessment .

I wouldn’t hold my breath on the timing of that rumor. The source of the Rumor is Autocar. Autocar is essentially the National Enquirer of Automotive Rumors.
http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/AllCars/254419/
BTW it isn’t the K20 from the Civic SI, which is going out of production. The rumor is for 1.6L Turbo model producing somewhere between 160-200HP.
I do expect that they will boost power at some point, but I think it will be a couple of years off, in the too little too late era and it will likely be a top model above the EX costing a couple of grand more.
The Hyundai is also rumored to have a Turbo coming eventually BTW. So it may be a dogfight for the turbo models, but it looks like Hyundai will kill it for the base models if they deliver their rumored 140HP in the base car.

Aaah-don’t get my hopes up for a CR-Z engine upgrade. I think it looks fantastic, and it’s got a Honda 6 speed. BTW, I think the Veloster looks very interesting, and the 1 rear door is great for putting stuff in the back seat. I only ever drove 2 door coupes/hatchbacks (including an ’87 CRX Si) until my current 328i sedan, and having a rear door or two is awfully handy (even if the 3 series coupe is clearly the looker). If the Veloster’s curb weight is similar to an Accent’s then 140 hp would be plenty.

I don’t see the need for a rear passenger doors for putting stuff in the backseat of a hatchback.
In my last hatchback, the rear seats were folded 99% of the time. I don’t put stuff in the back seat, I put it in the hatch, that is the whole point of a hatch.
Now if you are talking about putting people back there, then obviously the rear passenger doors are handy. If I was going to carry rear seat passengers more than once/month, then I would get a 4 door.
I would much rather they aimed this more clearly as a 2door+hatch with 2+2 seating for emergencies. It would be symmetrical, lighter and less expensive.

From en.wikipedia:
“Though originally most traffic drove on the left worldwide,[3] today about 66.1% of the world’s people live in right-hand traffic countries and 33.9% in left-hand traffic countries. About 72% of the world’s total road distance carries traffic on the right, and 28% on the left.”
So it’s roughly 2/3rds right-hand traffic (RHT=LHD cars), 1/3rd left-hand traffic (LHT=RHD) cars. That’s more than just “a few countries” that would have to switch over.

I’m sure that the rear door is a concession to young families with one (small) child. Perfect for a car seat, and (in the US) on the curb side. Yet the driver has good over-the-shoulder visibility and easy access. Yes, it’s odd, but the Saturn was even more weird, as the 3rd door was on the street side (not good for offloading kids).

But great for single people, or people who mostly drive solo. My wife has a 4 door sedan, but the passenger side rear door is almost never touched. She would be equally well served by a 3 door with the extra door on the driver’s side.
Where I live, far more parking is done in perpendicular parking lot slots, not on the street. In that context, a passenger side third door is less useful, as you have to walk around the car to get to it, and back around to get in after using it.

I think this is one of those opinions that are almost entirely colored by different experiences.

When I’m in the states, I split my time my time between city living in the NE corridor and the burbs in TX. In DC, Baltimore and Philly, almost everyone I know parks parallel and a passenger side 3rd door is extremely handy. The only time I ever park perp to the curb is when I head out to a big box store out in the burbs. I’ll load stuff into the rear passenger side just so I don’t have to hang out in the street to offload.

OTOH, parallel parking is almost completely unknown in TX and Cali living.

My guess is that for the young, urban demographic, passenger side door is more ideal.

This is why this strikes me as a largely pointless gimmick.
Instead of different bodies for RHD/LHD and debates about which side the rear door is best located, why not simple give it two rear doors???
Either give it TWO or FOUR passenger doors.
If you make the decision that TWO doors aren’t enough fine. But in what possible way is THREE passenger doors better than FOUR ???

Still I am looking forward to the reveal on Monday and I would likely still get it in spite of this gimmick.